


Kingfisher

by paperiuni



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Action & Romance, Background Catarina Loss, Battle Couple, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Intimacy, M/M, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Episode: s03e01 On Infernal Ground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-10 05:51:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14731157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: Rekindling a romance is easier said than done, especially when your date is interrupted by demons. Magnus and Alec deal with some trouble, work through some fears, and come to a new understanding.(Set after 3.01.)





	Kingfisher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dykeadellic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykeadellic/gifts).



> For the purposes of this fic, season 3A is a little more spaced out and doesn't all happen in like a week.

*

There was a story, Magnus seemed to remember, about a bird making her nest on a winter sea. He'd had it told to him long ago. Just before the solstice, the winds and waves stood still for her. Only the feeling it'd given him had remained, the sense of silence in the middle of storms.

He'd felt like that as of late.

It was a blue evening, the first frost in the air, crisp and not too cold for an after-dinner walk about the pier. Alec had taken his hand and Magnus had made no gesture of reclaiming it.

Their conversation fell into a lull. The moon rose, kindly and golden, above the buildings. People passed them and were passed by them in turn: parents with their sleepy children, couples huddled together on benches, a lone moon-gazer paused at the guardrail. Despite himself, Magnus waited for the moment when one or the other of them would break the handhold, too conscious of its intimacy. They proceeded, Alec's elbow brushing his arm, his shoulder nudging Alec's shoulder. The cold and the streetlights turned their breath into shimmering mist.

Someone followed them with a lingering look, but when Magnus looked back, ready to make the gawker take a spill into the next convenient gutter, she only smiled. Even random onlookers seemed to have more faith in his happiness than he did.

It'd been some weeks since the one they'd spent apart—broken up, he should say. He'd done that. They'd won a hard victory and come back to each other in the dizzy aftermath. Warlock memory being as fickle and merciful as the human equivalent, he'd forget the details in due course, but for now they remained sore.

He should've been better practiced at second chances, at letting the past lie. There was ever only the moment, and either you lived in it or strived after things that either were gone or might never come.

The moment. Alec's faintly chilly fingers folded into his own. He'd allowed it. In another fifty yards, they'd be out of the dusky park. In another four hundred, at the High Street station. Alec would kiss him, lean into it with care, and go to his bed at the Institute and his early morning of shepherding his Shadowhunters.

It might've been simply healing pains, like a new shoe that chafed despite any number of magical nudges to make it fit, until use alone molded it to the proper shape. Some things you couldn't fix with a charm. Alec helped him remember that.

Alec would go to his bed, or Magnus would deepen their parting kiss, take his hand, and take him home.

He had a few minutes to make up his mind.

Beside a crosswalk, two young women argued in Hungarian about the ownership of Truman Capote's house. Magnus almost dipped into the conversation with a helpful side comment, when something else drew his attention.

The feeling of magic happening was not simple. Every warlock had their idiosyncrasies; Magnus had always thought that he heard Ragnor's magic but smelled Catarina's, both of their workings more subdued than his own showy style.

From a distance, the jolt of the spell was like the impact of a landslide, a tremor under his feet.

"Magnus?" Alec pivoted on his heel, pulled to a halt along with Magnus.

"Somebody's fighting. Or fleeing." Whatever it was, the spell had had some punch. Subtler magic tended to be lost in the noise of the world and its life, whether wondrous or everyday, but the hard pluck of combat spells cast wider echoes. "Over that way."

"You got a direction?" The switch that Alec's posture underwent was familiar: feet set apart, back straight, shoulders loose. He wasn't in mission gear, but his hand brushed the blade hilt he carried under his jacket. "Let's take the alley."

"And somebody's eager," Magnus quipped without heat. "Was the moonrise over Brooklyn that humdrum?"

"You're the one getting weird vibes here. I don't hear anything."

"It felt like a warlock, but I have no idea who." Barely a quarter of a mile from his lair. Surely that put the disturbance in his territory, even when the city as a whole was no longer his concern. He could blame it on old habits.

They went past the ladies at their debate and into the alley Alec had spotted. Once they were out of general sight, Alec sketched a rune on his forearm.

"Southeast, right?" His gaze went glassy, but he was looking the exact same way Magnus was inclined to go.

"It could have been an overly emphatic portal," Magnus said, even as he spun a glamour over himself. They'd be committing some light trespassing in short order: he didn't have an exact location, so a portal would be too chancy. "We don't actually have to play neighborhood watch."

"We're hiding behind a coffee shop so we won't do magic in full view of mundanes," Alec said, philosophically. "Figure we already are." He sounded distant, swept up in his runic reconnaissance.

Magnus considered his—their—track record on becoming involved in other people's problems. It rather spoke for itself.

"Demons," Alec said then, and Magnus's heart sank. Alec's eyes blinked back into focus. "I can't tell how many, but more than one. There's this—waver in the air."

"You're sure?" Magnus frowned at his own question. Whatever effect had caught his attention, it still resonated when he reached for it. "Of course you are. Come on."

Had some fledgling warlock botched a summoning? Minor demons would most often give his kind a berth: they recognized the marks of their own infernal superiors under the layers of humanity. 

As concerns went, this search and rescue at least beat Magnus's private woolgathering over their rekindled relationship.

They slipped through the alley, over a rusting steel gate, and onto the next street. When Alec's rune dwindled—in any case, it required him to stand still and stare into the middle distance—Magnus trailed the lingering magic through the last traffic of the day. The cold crept into his lungs. They kept going, cloaked in glamour, at a near run.

The building where they stopped was weatherbeaten red brick, the hatchwork of recently repainted fire escapes decorating its facade. Lights glimmered in the windows, and the street level was taken up by an ice cream bar. The bright-colored awnings snapped in a drift of wind.

"It looks painfully bourgeois," Magnus said. "Let me see if I can—"

Five stories above, someone screamed: a raw, hoarse noise of agony, followed by a scuffle and a thud.

"Shit." A rune flared in Alec's side, the soft harmonic chime of his stele dying away. "I'm gonna go ahead."

"Wait a—" The creak of the nearest fire escape was Magnus's only answer, as Alec sprinted up the steps. The company Alec kept made him seem like the level-headed one, but given the right incentive—such as someone in danger—he could be just as brazen as Clary or Jace. If Magnus tried to create a portal to the roof at this distance, it'd collapse in on itself before he could step through.

Swearing under his breath, in a consummately obscene turn of Chthonian, he climbed after Alec. While he did not equal a hale young Shadowhunter with a speed rune, he covered the four flights of stairs with respectable swiftness, spurred by alarm. Magic thickened the air like an invisible ashfall.

Alec shouted. Metal scraped. Something made a sound like the suction of air into a tube at great force. The fire escape ended at the topmost story, and Magnus vaulted himself up with a frankly excessive burst of power—as a rule, he preferred not to argue with gravity—and landed on the roof to the side of a frantic melee.

In his first glimpse, he saw six or seven roughly human-sized demons surrounding Alec. One of them crumbled into a cloud of cinders as Alec cut it in two, from a slouched shoulder and down through the torso. He swerved into a parry to the side, a contained flow of blocks and strikes. The creatures were covered in ragged scales that shimmered grey and phosphorescent green. Instead of arms, their upper limbs were sturdy tentacles studded with scarlet suckers, and two pairs of them lashed at Magnus as he stood from his crouch.

Ideally, he'd have taken a bit of distance between him and his targets. Crashers couldn't be choosers, he supposed, kicking up heat and flame meant more to drive the demons back than scorch them. The nearest one stumbled into the attack and caught fire, anyway.

"Magnus, in the corner!" Even encircled by four rather than six opponents, Alec had his hands full. He spun away from a demon that dove at him from his left, the side of his empty hand, and backed toward the raised edge of the roof.

Magnus dared a glance; there was a slumped shape to his right, under the shadow of the parapet. He edged closer, when the second demon leaped over its smoking packmate and lunged at him.

The beasts were flammable. That worked for Magnus. The close quarters meant small blasts fit better than proper fireballs; he ducked under the demon's swing and shoved a fistful of flame in the toothy circle that passed for its mouth. Keening in its wheezing way, it struck a flailing blow at him. The suckers left holes in his coat sleeve, the fabric eaten away as if by acid.

Possibly he should've brought a hand weapon to this spell fight. Another burst drove the demon back a couple of steps. "Don't let them touch you!"

"That's the idea!" Contrary to both their advice, Alec seized a demon by the back of its neck and slammed it into the corner of the parapet. Ichor spurted from its smashed face and onto Alec's, as he jabbed his seraph blade into its back. "We—we can't get bogged down here! They're tracker demons. They were going for the guy over there."

Inhaling, Magnus dragged another surge of ambient magic into his palms, refined it, focused it. He couldn't keep a barrage like this up for long, but his next spell ate up the second demon, and it scattered into a plume of soot.

Alec seemed to have the rest under control, though only as long as he could stay in motion, his seraph blade a bright streak in the air. If Magnus could grab the wounded warlock, a portal would see them all safe. He dashed to the corner.

The man crumpled on the roof had a line of bleeding blisters over his face and down his bare arm. He drew shallow breaths, as if filling his lungs hurt too much. His skin was a light shade of brown, and an arc of teal-speckled feathers grew from each brow and fanned down over his cheeks: a bared warlock mark. The demon's suckers had burned the lids of his eyes, though they were scrunched shut now. Magnus grimaced in sympathy. The hit might well have blinded him. Tracker demons. They'd tried to subdue the warlock, not kill him.

"Hello?" The man's lack of sight didn't mean he couldn't greet Magnus with a spell to the face. "Can you hear me?"

The warlock turned his head. It looked laborious.

Then the sound of a body impacting on the roof wrested Magnus's attention back to the fight. Alec was supine, pinned by a demon that'd wrapped a limb around his left arm. Two others prowled around them, waiting for an opening.

Twisting onto his side, Alec shucked off his jacket, wrenching his arm from the sleeve by main force. The demon reared, with Alec still on his knees. Magnus squashed the dread that raked at him.

"Stay low!" He sent an arcing lash of flame into the demon's back. The magic connected squarely, and the beast made an ear-shredding noise, a razor rush of air, as it collapsed. As if in resonance, Magnus teetered, too much magic poured through him in too short a time.

Alec got his feet under him, seraph blade in hand, and shouted, "Magnus, behind!"

Then the two demons to either side of Alec snapped the pincer of their attack shut. He scrambled to parry one, aiming a low, vicious kick at the other. Magnus had no time to observe: he spun a semicircle to put a desperate spell between himself and the third and final beast, which had tried to blindside him. Magic crashed from his outflung hands, not fire but pure shivering force.

Pacing, pacing was the thing. When you fought humans or even other Downworlders—on the unhappy occasions it'd been necessary—you knew the opponent needed to catch their breath.

Demons didn't tire. They came on endlessly. He yanked the spell into a band around the demon and wrung it tight until the creature crumpled.

His ears hummed, and he stumbled back against the parapet. The air tasted raw, sliding down his throat. He really should stick to problems he could solve with potions, or tasteful small-scale rituals at most.

Something rang on the concrete at his feet.

He saw the seraph blade dim and die, leaving only the hilt now that it was loose from its wielder's grasp. The world seemed to skew in his vision.

There was one demon left. The flaking dregs of its brethren were still in the air. Its right tentacle was wound around Alec's throat, pinioning him to the ground by his neck. Its maw snapped at his fingers as he clawed to break the chokehold. His legs kicked uselessly, struggling for leverage on the frost-slick roof. His mouth moved but no air went in.

For a heartbeat, Magnus froze. Alec's face, upside down, twisted with panic and pain. 

Then, with a shaky spurt of strength, Alec forced the tip of his stele into the demon's lidless eye. The stele was no weapon, but it was made of adamas. The demon recoiled and thrashed under the sear of the heavenly metal. Coughing, Alec rolled over, and punched the sharp point into its face, over and over, with repeated, squelching noises.

"Alexander!" Startled out of his shock, Magnus remembered the blade hilt. He scooped it up, took aim, and threw it across the roof. As it rebounded, Alec caught it in a commendable feat of dexterity. He rose onto his knees, the blade flickered into existence, and he slashed the cringing demon through its middle. It fell into dust.

One instant had split life from death there. Magnus took the knowledge and put it away like a volatile alchemical sample, to be examined in a moment of greater calm.

"Are you—are you okay?" Alec sounded raspy. He spoke. He breathed. Magnus nodded, not trusting his voice. "Good. And him?"

Alec stood up. He wiped his gory stele on his shirt hem, unconcerned, and ignited the healing rune on his side. While Magnus wanted to go to him and look him over, wanted it so much that it hurt, reason told him the injured warlock was a more urgent concern. Slowly, carefully, he shaped a spell that would ease pain and restore sense.

The man stirred, touched his burned eyes, and hissed. Magnus caught his hand. Spoke softly. "Easy now. You're all right. You'll be all right. Do you know where you are?"

The man's feathered cheek spasmed. "Philadelphia? I—hoped I was. The portal—"

"Oh, dear." Magnus lightened his tone. This close, he could sense how the man's power ebbed and thinned. He was exhausted, had been even before his injury. "You've landed in fair New York City. Relatively speaking, you weren't too far off. Or lost in limbo, which is lucky. Do you have a name?"

"Felix," said the man, with difficulty. 

"Lucky indeed. Well, Felix, I'm happy to say your pursuers are dealt with, and someone's going to see to your eyes—" Magnus twitched at his own choice of words "—as soon as I can make a call. You're safe."

"Thank you." It was the last thing he said before slackening against Magnus's supporting hand.

"I have to call this in," Alec said from behind them. "There were too few of those things to be a full pack. The rest are somewhere not too far away. How's he doing?"

"I can keep him stable." The after-battle drop would be brief, but it was steep this time. Not as bad as after sealing the rift on the beach, but harsh enough to shake his legs. "I suppose I should inform the new High Warlock that there's a lost soul in his jurisdiction."

Alec made an unflattering face. Magnus loved him a little more for it.

A semi-improvised suspension spell later—he hadn't played combat medic in over a century—he called Catarina. He wasn't particularly happy to do so, but he didn't have the reserves or the finesse for a healing spell as complex as Felix's blistered eyes would require.

Since it was Catarina's day off, she was in the middle of some delicate experiment of her own. She'd be a moment.

Thus, also unhappily, Magnus ushered Alec back to the Institute to organize a few extra patrols so the demons would be contained. Then he used the same portal to take himself and their torpid rescuee back to the loft.

The minutes oozed by. Magnus did not pace. Laid on the couch, his patient required no tending, which would've been a distraction and thus a relief. Absentmindedly, he shook puffs of demon ash from his hair and clothes. Dust and air. All that remained.

He kept thinking back to Alec's last tight nod before he stepped into the portal. There'd been flecks of ichor on his cheek. Tension in his jaw. Magnus thought, too late, of running his fingers over its rigid line to smooth the strain away. Carefully, he banished the image of the red sores squeezed into Alec's neck.

An hour ago, he'd wondered if he wanted Alec to stay the night.

Catarina arrived, through his wards like the boon companion she was, smelling of ozone and old roses. Magnus unraveled the suspension spell to find Felix slightly more coherent. He was a riddle, but not one for Magnus to solve. Not anymore.

It was better to think that way, as long as the thought still smarted.

"I have something that'll do the trick," Catarina said after a brief examination. "But it will take overnight. And you look anxious to be somewhere."

What could Magnus do at that but offer a self-conscious chuckle? She'd needed one look at him to know.

"I should check on Alexander," he said. It wasn't a lie, at least. It was a mild expression for the emotion he'd been keeping at bay for the last hour and change, that beat at him like a trapped bird at glass.

"You also don't want to fire message Lorenzo Rey in the middle of the night and tell him about a wandering warlock chased by demons." _In your city_ was the part she omitted.

"No, I don't. But I will, if you can manage the rest." He kissed her on the cheek. "I owe you one."

"The count's already two in my favor," she said. Her smile showed teeth. "That's what I get for turning respectable while you gallivant around with Shadowhunters, saving the city on two Tuesdays a month. At least this time you brought me a wounded stranger for my guest room."

She squeezed his shoulder and went to help Felix up. Magnus watched her portal ripple open and the pair of them exit through it before drawing up his own.

It spun in the middle of the living room, stirring the air, billowing the curtains. A doorway to anywhere, of his own making.

There was only one place in his mind. Or rather, one person.

He stopped on the front steps of the Institute to adjust himself, angles sharp, head held up. The guard on duty in the foyer shot him a glance. He blew by her with the merest of _good evenings_ —some of them glared, but no one had tried to stop him in over a month. One might call it progress.

The door to Alec's office was ajar, the ceiling lights off, only the desk lamp casting its glow on Alec. He sat bent over his notebook, not writing. Collecting thoughts, judging by the knit angle of his brows.

Magnus paused in the doorway. The collar of Alec's long-sleeved tee-shirt—he wasn't dressed for Head of the Institute, insofar as he could ever drop the title within these walls—revealed the vivid bruising on his throat. Healing runes had undone the bloody welts, but their dark vestiges remained.

He looked tired, and preoccupied, and he was alive. Magnus hadn't really considered how much Alec seemed to belong here, among the aged, polished furniture and ostentatious stained-glass windows. His presence filled some of their hollow grandeur. Purpose, that was what he brought with him.

"Hey," Alec said, too soon, intruding on Magnus's reverie. There were shadows under his eyes, but he smiled. "I didn't see you there. I was gonna call you."

He turned his chair as Magnus stepped closer. There was the usual space for a kiss there, one of the gentle airy ones they traded when meeting and parting, easy as _hello_ and _see you tomorrow_.

Magnus needed to ask him about the demons—Alec had been adamant that he'd find the people to canvas the area. He needed to send that fire message. He needed to sit down and process the events of the night like a reasonable adult of four centuries.

Instead he went across the room, grabbed Alec's shoulders—not his neck, he barely remembered—and claimed his mouth in a kiss that wrenched something under his own heart. Alec gave a gasp, laced with laughter and confusion.

"Okay." The word was nearly lost against Magnus's mouth, and then Alec yielded to the kiss, his fingers at the lapels of Magnus's coat. "Oh, wow."

With Alec sitting down, the angle was clumsy, but the degree to which Magnus did not care was rather staggering. The chair, as imposing as it was, groaned when Magnus pushed one bent knee onto the seat. Alec curved upward to bring him closer. He was alive. Here was the proof. Magnus wanted to put his hands on him. 

Earlier today, he'd weighed the prudence of a single handhold, one cautious kiss. He was, perhaps, a hypocrite. Alec was here, after all. Not in Idris. Not gone from his life.

"Not in the office," Alec managed then, the next time they separated enough to speak. "Bedroom. Mine?"

Magnus's own wards prevented portaling inside the Institute, save for dedicated, well-guarded points. He'd entertained the idea of slipping in a personal backdoor, for, as the colloquialism went, shits and giggles, but now he lamented his diligence for a different reason. It'd be a shorter walk to Alec's room than outside the wards.

"Fine. Don't say you want me to wait five minutes before following you."

"Not a chance," said Alec. "Watch changes in an hour. Should be quiet in quarters right now."

They didn't see anyone in the hallway. Once the door was shut behind them, Magnus flattened his hand on it and conjured a crude but effective silencing charm. It flowed along the walls in a crackle of blue, hissing as his breath did when Alec kissed him at last. It'd been two minutes. It'd been an aeon. Magnus answered with too much teeth, fueled by urgency more than lust, tempered only when Alec pushed him to the door and bent his head back with both hands. His hand spread over Alec's heart, its hard beat palpable through his rucked shirt.

The world shrank to the pliant demand of Alec's mouth. Magnus forced himself to slow down and savor the kiss as it deserved. His clothes, corrected with a thought as he'd stepped into the Institute, were fast becoming a problem.

They came apart with mutual reluctance. Alec stroked his cheek with a thumb. "You good with this? My humble abode?"

Magnus had been in Alec's bedroom before. He spared it a look. It was dark save for the background light of the city seeping through the windows, mass and shadow resolving themselves into real objects as his eyes adjusted. The bed, the nightstand, the chair by the unassuming desk that held a few piled-up books.

"It has a door that locks," he said, "and something resembling a bed. I'm not in a picky mood, if you couldn't tell."

That got a laugh out of Alec, a soft husky thing that warmed Magnus in a way the thickening want could not.

"Hold on." Fishing out his phone, Alec silenced it and tossed it onto the desk chair. "Okay. Now I'm all yours."

Magnus hid his face into Alec's neck, sliding his hands up his back when they wanted to still and cling to him. _Oh, powers above and below. What did I step in this time?_

Thankfully, Alec hooked his fingers into Magnus's cravat and unwound the knot. He pointed himself at the task of disrobing Alec in turn, ignoring the burn in his throat.

Between them, they tugged at belt buckles and shirt hems. Magnus could've hurried things along with a studied turn of his wrist, but every brush of Alec's fingers on his skin shivered through him like a dropped stone making ripples in water. One or the other of them fumbled the bedside lamp on, foiled by buttons in the dark. Articles of clothing scattered one by one, into heaps on the bed and floor; Alec reached to deposit a tangled handful of Magnus's jewelry onto the nightstand.

It wasn't long before he had Alec naked in front of him. The black, dormant runes stood out against his skin in the soft light. So, if more dimly, did the bruises. Magnus put his mouth on them, just a wet glance of lips, and Alec tensed.

"Hurts?"

"No." Alec sounded half-choked. "Don't stop."

Magnus traced kisses over the skin where the demon had struck him, as if he could lick the injury clean from Alec's body, suck the memory from his own head. Alec barely seemed to breathe, only his fingers flexing at Magnus's hips. It wasn't control; it was Alec giving himself up.

It lasted for a fragile, taut minute. Magnus wanted it to go on: to exist here where nothing mattered except the building of Alec's breathless pleasure until it brimmed over. This hadn't been forbidden to him, not by Alec; he knew that much. Rather he'd denied himself. He broke, or Alec did, as Magnus pressed a kiss over his hammering heart.

"Magnus," Alec said, low, utterly done in, his hands at the small of Magnus's back. "I can't—"

Magnus took his mouth in a kiss and his cock in his hand. His free arm hooked around Alec's neck, fingers gripping the back of his shoulder. Alec gasped and bent into the kiss with a renewed will, but his arms stayed around Magnus, even as Magnus teased a thumb along the underside of his shaft. It was silken and solid under his touch, familiar and pleasingly full.

He let the kiss draw itself out, winding and exploratory, the tender shape of Alec's mouth a discovery he'd never tire of.

The kiss hitched as Alec's fingers slipped along the hollow of his spine, smooth with sweat, and grabbed his ass. Their cocks pressed together in a grinding slide. Moaning, unabashed, Magnus bucked into the contact. The kiss stuttered to an end. He crushed Alec as close as his unsteady hands could clutch him.

"Tell me you have something," he mumbled. "Because I'd rather not chance a summoning spell when—" _When I need you so much I can't even say it._

Alec worked through a heaving breath. "Yeah, I do."

 _Of course you do_ , Magnus nearly needled, half rue, half amusement. _All this pent-up energy had to go somewhere even before you stormed in my door for the bluntest seduction attempt in history._

The memory rang clear and golden, even the parts where they'd faltered endearing rather than awkward in retrospect. Alec's laughter and his own, getting in the way of kissing. Alec's hand on his cheek in reassurance Magnus hadn't known how to ask for. The present, the moment, the only thing that there was. Magnus had looked at him and not thought, for once, _You will break me yet._

That was the problem with halcyon days, with gentle seas. There'd always be the next storm.

He pulled himself back into Alec's arms here, in another room, at another time. Alec was leaned close enough that Magnus couldn't quite focus on him, their bodies held together. Slotted against Magnus's stomach, Alec's cock stirred, hot as a promise. His muscles leaped in answer, desire a dark pulse at the base of his spine.

"You want me to fuck you? " Alec didn't hesitate for more than a second. Commendable, that, and regrettably arousing. "Please say you do."

"Yeah," Magnus breathed out. Surrender lapped at him. He wanted to sink in it. "You have no idea."

Alec kissed him like he didn't know what else to do. If so, neither did Magnus. He curved ungentle fingers over Alec's bruises, thumbs dragging across his clavicle and pulling a moan from him as the kiss consumed them both. He'd been fearful of this for so long: the stripping of the self to its bare wanting core, the pouring of it into the waiting hands of another.

Alec caught him and turned him around; his mouth trailed over Magnus's cheek to his ear. His shins bumped against the edge of the bed. It was lower than his own, covered in a muted blue bedspread. Alec's hand splayed over the nape of his neck.

"Go to your knees." Even whispered in his ear, it was an order.

Magnus smothered a groan so it came out as a rasp of breath. It wasn't much less blatant than the sound he'd swallowed. At Alec's nudge, he knelt on the floor. The wood was old and well-worn, cool to his skin. He laid his hands on the bed and spread his fingers. To his right something thumped to the floor as Alec rummaged through a drawer. The sensory details anchored Magnus against the hum in his head.

The touch of Alec's fingers between his legs plunged him right into that whispering current. He canted his hips as Alec stroked the cleft of his ass, a warm slippery tease, circling his hole. Then the pressure of fingertips easing inside him.

This was the part he could not get Alec to rush. Alec would take his time until Magnus was pliant and ready—and, on a day, writhing with frustration—with a hallowed sense of duty and purpose Magnus wasn't entirely sure belonged in the bedroom.

Not that it mattered. It belonged in his bedroom now, for as long as Alec did. He set his teeth against his knuckles and let Alec do as he pleased. Which was to work his fingers into Magnus in crooking, rhythmic thrusts that kept him tilted just short of too much.

By the time Alec withdrew, Magnus was biting back a spate of needy noises and not quite succeeding. The shuddering breaths Alec drew betrayed the cost of his mesmerizing care. Neither of them spoke as they shifted, Magnus bracing himself against the bed, Alec parting his legs so he could slide his cock inside him, slow and deep, with the same stubborn focus. Magnus panted into his own palm. 

Then Alec tucked his head against Magnus's shoulder and began to fuck him. There seemed to be a sound dammed in Alec's throat, trickling out in ragged gasps, but even so, he let the pace quicken gradually, each glide back and forth sparking stars behind Magnus's eyes. Not long ago he'd have thought it unbecoming to be so easily undone. It made no difference. Maybe it was Alec that made the difference.

When Magnus took hold of his head, carded his fingers into his messy hair, Alec let out that trapped, heady moan and lost his own tempo. Magnus turned his face, his nose to Alec's temple. Tenderness becalmed him. "Oh, sweetheart." 

He let Alec even out his breathing, his hand wide on Magnus's ribs, the curve of his arm heavy. In this they ached the same, after all.

They took a moment. Magnus kissed the sweat from Alec's brow. Alec murmured something into his neck about love, something darling and ill-thought, and Magnus laughed not to dismiss it but to delight in it.

Alec's fingers found Magnus's cock, a firm light grip, and they both groaned as Alec thrust into him again. Alec held him there, at the careless height of pleasure, filling him in time with the twisting strokes of his fist down his straining cock. Even when all other thought melted away, Magnus knew he only had to ask.

He didn't. He allowed himself to be here, grasping, hungry, wrapped up in Alec, until the need wore them both down. The building orgasm, like the unseen swell of an underwater wave, churned in him. He had the bare presence of mind to think, _Oh, this will be a good one._

In the end it spread through him like liquid light, every nerve alive with it. Alec came after him, his concentration drained, spilling himself across Magnus's back and bowing his head between his shoulder-blades. He lingered, a warm, precious weight, and slid away too soon.

It took Magnus a long moment to find words. His mind was quiet, smooth as the sea in midwinter.

They fell to lie on the bed, shoulders touching, making a V of exhausted, sated bodies. Magnus reached for Alec's shoulder and was rewarded with his hand to clasp.

"I—" Now he'd opened his mouth, and still he had no idea what he wanted to say. 

"You came to my office just for this," Alec said, hoarse. "That's some kind of dedicated."

"That—wasn't my original plan. We did have some things to talk about." Business. Debriefing, Alec might've termed it. The matter of an errant warlock tucked away in Catarina's guest room. Magnus took a smart turn off that path before it led to him remembering he had a report to make. He had most of the night left for that.

It faded next to the fact that had struck him at Alec's door. _I just got you back and I nearly lost you._

"You didn't start with any of them." Alec shifted, though not closer. Had they ever had sex in this bed—or the vicinity of it, as the case might be—before? Magnus couldn't recall, which meant they'd made love too often for him to tell the individual times apart.

Some day he'd stop being surprised by that.

He dragged a fidgety foot against the bedspread. "I imagine I started with the most important thing."

"Right." Alec sounded dubious, in a languid, post-coital sort of way. "Ravishing me."

One could have disputed the point of who'd done most of said ravishing. Magnus laughed, then sobered. Oh, emotional honesty. How dare it ambush him in a vulnerable moment, the blackguard.

Alec had been taught to view sacrifice for a greater goal as the highest ideal. He applied it to love, as well: he'd give himself up without second thought, for anyone he cared about. It was an unforgiving credo, one Magnus had been content to avoid for centuries. It made an offering of something that should've been a gift.

_If you let them, they'll break you. Use you and work you and bleed you until you're inured to the world as it is and have no more desire to change it._

_I will not let them._

Magnus raised himself onto his elbows, so he could look down at Alec, sloe-eyed and smiling. He ran his index finger over Alec's bruised throat. "Let me make one thing clear."

Alec's smile thinned into an inquisitive slant. "Yeah?"

"You don't just belong to yourself," Magnus said, sniffed, then continued, "You are not expendable."

"Magnus—" He could hear the protests gathering on Alec's tongue, claims of strategy and calculated risks, the facts of a soldier's life. Alec's hand curled into his hair, gentle and brooking no resistance.

It might've been easier for Alec to love another of his own kind. Magnus tried to have no false notions of that. He'd decided to love Magnus instead, across a chasm of centuries and societies. You could not love in the conditional, not the way Alec deserved.

"You're mine now," Magnus finished. "Try to have a care."

Eyes wide, Alec nodded up at him.

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand thanks to my stalwart betas, Clouds and Jilly, for all their help.


End file.
